Queenie: Godmother of Harlem
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
An NAACP Image Award Nominee, Queenie: Godmother of Harlem is a historical graphic novel inspired by the life of legendary mobster Stephanie Saint-Clair, the infamous criminal who made herself a legend in the 1930s.
“It’s original, entertaining, riveting, moving. A beautiful piece of art, a must-read!” —Whoopi Goldberg
Born on a plantation in the French colony of Martinique, Stephanie Saint-Clair left the island in 1912 and headed for the United States, eager to make a new life for herself. In New York she found success, rising up through poverty and battling extreme racism to become the ruthless queen of Harlem’s mafia and a fierce defender of the Black community.
A racketeer and a bootlegger, Saint-Clair dedicated her wealth and compassion to the struggling masses of Harlem, giving loans and paying debts to those around her. But with Prohibition ending, and under threat by Italian mobsters seeking to take control of her operation, she launched a merciless war to save her territory and her skin. In an America still swollen by depression and segregation, Saint-Clair understood that her image was a tool she could use to establish her power and wield as a weapon against her opponents.
Authors Elizabeth Colomba and Aurelie Levy’s meticulous details—in both story and art—bring Saint-Clair’s story to life in a tense narrative, against a sometimes bloody backdrop of jazz and voodoo. The story tackles the themes of colonization, corruption, police violence, and racial identity, but above all, Queenie celebrates the genius of a woman forgotten by history.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Artist Colomba and documentary filmmaker Lévy team up for a rollicking retelling of the incredible life of Stephanie St. Clair, a Depression-era Harlem racketeer who outmaneuvered such mobsters as Dutch Schultz and Lucky Luciano while frustrating the police at every turn. With her enforcer "Bumpy" Johnson at her side, Queenie applies her genius for math to running numbers and uses her wealth to fight for civil rights and against police corruption. "Hope comes at a loan shark's rate," though, she warns. As she grows more powerful, she becomes a target for both law enforcement and underworld rivals. Colomba's clean, crisp art brings the era to life, displaying impeccable research on historical details in clothing and jewelry while plunging the characters into lavish period settings: sophisticated Harlem parties, shows at the Cotton Club, neighborhood shops selling everything from dry goods to voodoo supplies, and flashbacks to Queenie's childhood in Martinique. Levy peppers the fast-paced story with snappy dialogue ("I was so poor, I couldn't jump over a nickel to save a dime"), diagrams explaining the logistics of organized crime, and quotations from the philosophy and poetry of the Harlem Renaissance. This smart, sure-footed biography belongs on every history aficionado's shelf.
